


Our Work Has Just Begun

by Snow



Category: Space Vehicles
Genre: Gen, rocket science - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snow/pseuds/Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"These beings, with soaring imagination, eventually flung themselves and their machines, into interplanetary space." So says Carolyn Porco. With Voyager 1 and 2, we are about to fling our machines into interstellar space. We are nothing but a pale blue dot, a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam - and the Voyagers just keep showing us how tiny we really are. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Work Has Just Begun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [finch (afinch)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/gifts).



> Thanks to kangeiko for the beta.

At first, it had been exciting. One million, nine hundred and ninety one thousand pounds of force, pushing Voyager 1 _up_ , up, past the surface, past the atmosphere, until the Earth fell away so fast that he would have missed it if he'd had to blink. He didn't have to blink. He could feel the thrill as each stage expended itself and then fell away, back towards Earth or orbit on the upper ones, could feel the way the propellant exhausted itself, inexorable once it had started; but that was his whole journey, wasn't it? 

He was stuck in space now, less than ten minutes after he'd started, no way to re-enter without burning up, with just eight thrusters for larger adjustments and sixteen smaller ones, capped at point two pounds of force. It wasn't really anything at all, but it was enough to keep him from spinning, enough to let him make tiny adjustments to study whatever might come up. He just had to trust that the course he'd been set on was right, trust that he wouldn't go off in a completely useless direction, or get caught in the orbit of some planet, or crash into some asteroid. It was both easy and hard to trust: he knew better than most just how many calculations had gone into his path, just how much double-checking there had been, how much recalculating happened after the fact as new things became interesting, and how many places there still were where something could go wrong.

When he was one, he got to see Jupiter. There were lots of pictures that he could send back, and observations with his instruments, but that wasn't really the exciting part. Jupiter was _big_ , after all. It could be seen even from Earth. Sure, he could see more of the planet up close, but the part he cared most about were its moons and its rings, the ones that no one had even known existed. There was so much to learn there, so much that he could tell people about, and even more that he could spot as things they should send other spacecraft to examine. They needed to send someone who could sit and study just Io for years, because there really was that much worth studying. It was fascinating.

But _he_ didn't have years, he had other places to be, and he was here as much to use Jupiter's gravity to slingshot him a little further, a little faster, to Saturn, as he was to study Jupiter itself

He thought he got used to waiting then, in the gap between the planets. 

It was still, and quiet, and after the excitement of everything he'd learned from Jupiter and its moons had faded most of what he heard was checks to make sure all of his instruments would still be working when he got to Saturn. The people talking to him from Earth were still excited, and so was he, but they were all excited for what he was going to do, not what he was doing now. What he was doing now was waiting, and he was good at it, certainly, but he liked the excitement a little better.

He was alone more often with his thoughts once they'd set him up on the course. He snapped pictures, took observations, after all he was still a lot closer than they were on Earth, he could still learn a lot more. But there were fewer scientists working on his mission now, fewer people telling him to take a measurement of this or a picture of that.

He was three when he got close to Saturn, still as bright-eyed as he had been when the journey started, still able to catch all the details that he was looking for. This was what he had been designed for, after all, and he'd had all that waiting to get ready. The scientists had learned -- after he had left and before he arrived there -- that one of Saturn's moons was even more interesting than they'd suspected, complete with an atmosphere. They told him to check it out further, and he was ready for that. He had only been designed to visit Saturn and Jupiter, after all, but if he could help with Titan, then he wanted to.

Some of the scientists talked about sending him to Pluto afterwards, talked in excited tones and made sure they figured out exactly where he was. That part wasn't easy, there wasn't a map that he could consult and they had to send multiple signals to him from different places at what they said was the same time, and have him tell them when he actually got them. It all seemed kind of silly -- he could detect where the Earth was, why couldn't they just get a good telescope and see him?

They decided against sending him to Pluto -- not because they couldn't do it, but because they could send him a little closer to Titan if they didn't, and they wanted to make sure that would work.

Once he'd taken his pictures of Titan, sent his information back to Earth, they told him to keep going. He wasn't going to visit any more planets, they said; instead he was going to go further than any other probe had yet gone. He supposed that was okay. Then they told him how long it would be. He guessed that he had a bit more waiting to do. 

The Earth kept moving away from him, the whole solar system falling behind. He felt like he was engaging in the world's longest race between a turtle and a hare, but while everyone told him he was the turtle, chugging away and on towards whatever that finish line would be, he felt a little like the hare, falling asleep at the job. Sure, he still took cool pictures for a while, pictures that showed everyone else just how tiny they were. He was even smaller, he wanted to tell them, but they knew. They still remembered how big he had been when they launched him, and they still had their antennae trained on him, reporting his position daily.

They told him what they wanted him to pay attention to now, and he kept telling them everything he knew. They would put the pieces together, figure out what it meant and then tell him what other information they wanted him to get. He wanted to tell them that he could see the edge of the interstellar medium ahead, but of course he couldn't. He wouldn't even know that he'd crossed over until they had a chance to analyze the data and tell him. He didn't even really know what direction was the 'ahead' they were pointing him at, everything in the sky moved so slowly. 

The only thing he had left then were his tiny thrusters, with their point two pounds of force. Voyager didn't think that he could do anything with them anymore, wasn't sure why they were saving them, but when he was thirty-four they had him do a roll just to prove he could. It had been twenty-one years since he had last moved, and it was a strange sensation moving at all. He kept an eye on the sun, but mostly he knew where he was because the scientists told him, sixteen hours after they found out. He was forever running behind, thirty-two hours now, and that gap was still growing.

After he moved, he had to get his antenna pointed in the right direction. It was scary to think that he might be alone out here -- he knew that was the plan now, that he would be alone eventually. He wasn't ready for it yet. He didn't have to be alone for long, he found his star -- Alpha Centauri -- and from there he found the Earth, and from _there_ he was able to start up communication again.

With his new position they said he could monitor the solar wind better, and he was all for doing thing better whenever he could.

According to the scientists and engineers, that was most of the time. He didn't want to be smug about it, but it was hard not to be. It wasn't that they didn't have faith in him to keep working, but some of these things were tricky enough to make them sweat, those light-hours away. He didn't sweat, it wasn't something he had been built to do. Besides, out there, past the edge of the solar system, he had a serenity that might be called zen if being so awesome wasn't also pretty self-satisfying.

"It's okay that it's boring," an engineer had told him once. "That just means that everything's working right."


End file.
